Until Judgment Day Read Online Free Page B

hairline.
    â€œProjectile perforated the medial anterior cortex on a front-to-back”—he consulted the X ray hanging on the lighted film reader—“slightly downward track. The opening measures approximately six-point-five millimeters. There is no exit wound.
    â€œPull up your face masks,” Nelson instructed. “There’ll be some aerosolization—airborne particulate material is unavoidable with a cranial saw.”
    Granz and Mackay, both wearing surgical scrubs, placed their masks over their faces.
    Nelson combed the corpse’s gray hair forward, then covered his own nose and mouth and switched on the Stryker saw, a special vibrating instrument that cuts bone but not soft tissue.
    It bogged down slightly as the blade bit into the occipital bone, and threw off a faint mist of powdered bone and smoke as the saw cut toward the front, around the periphery of the skull below the hairline.
    â€œNow for the fun part.” He set aside the saw. “Gotta be careful when I lift this off so the dura—the cover of the brain—stays with the calavarium.”
    He tugged gently. As the top lifted free the skull grated together, like two halves of a split coconut being twisted, and made a slight sucking sound. He set the skull aside, then severed the spinal cord attachment and tentorium, lifted the brain out, and set it on the table.
    â€œI’ll put it in a jar of formalin for a couple of weeks to firm up the tissue before dissection,” he explained, “but first I’ll remove the bullet.”
    With long-nosed, soft-plastic forceps Nelson carefully probed the wound, pulled out the bullet, and dropped it in a clear plastic evidence bag, which he handed to Granz, who sealed and initialed it.
    â€œThe slug’s not badly deformed. DOJ shouldn’t have any trouble IDing the weapon that fired it.”
    He rolled the body onto its right side and slid another body-block under the back, forcing the chest to protrude and the arms and neck to fall back. Then he pulled a black-handled Buck knife from a leather case, sharpened it on a sheet of extrafine sandpaper, and drew the razor-sharp blade down an eight-by-ten sheet of paper. The paper sliced cleanly into two pieces, which he tossed in a trash basket.
    â€œBetter than a scalpel.”
    He sliced V-shaped incisions from each shoulder to the abdomen, and a horizontal cut from hipbone to hipbone, then pulled the chest flap over the face, and peeled the skin off the rib cage. With a small battery-powered Stryker saw, he removed the rib cage to expose the inner organs.
    He nudged the innards with his hand, but before lifting out the lungs and organ block, he glanced at Granz. “I see nothing unusual. Cause of death was the bullet to the brain. Why don’t you two take off.”
    â€œGladly.” Granz removed his scrubs and helped Mackay with hers. “Wanta stop at Starbucks for coffee on the way home, Babe?”
    â€œSure,” she told him. “I could use it.”
    â€œMe too.” Granz turned to Nelson. “Give us an hour, then if you find anything unexpected, call me at home.”
    â€œWill do.” Nelson started to lift the organ block out of the body, but stopped.
    â€œKate?” Morgan called at their backs.
    She turned. “Yeah?”
    â€œRemember what I told you.”

Chapter 7
    â€œ W HAT ’ D D OCTOR D EATH mean by ‘Remember what I told you’?”
    A newspaper had once run an article that hung the nickname on Morgan Nelson, and it had stuck, at least with the cops.
    Granz bit a corner off his lemon tart, set it back on the saucer, and washed it down with a cautious sip of steaming espresso.
    â€œPlease don’t call him that,” Mackay said.
    â€œSorry. What’d he mean?”
    They sat at a window table in the mall Starbucks, watching last-minute shoppers hustling back to their cars loaded down with bags of food and Christmas